A Spanish court has issued an arrest warrant on those charges for Efrain Rios Montt, a former military ruler of Guatemala and favorite of the American Religious Right.

According to a report in the September 2006 issue of Christianity Today, Rios Montt ruled for 17 months in the early ‘80s during a decades-long civil war that pitted right-wing military forces against Marxist guerilla groups. Thousands were killed in the struggle, most of them innocent civilians.

The general, lay pastor of the Pentecostal Verbo Church, was a darling of American TV preachers and evangelists such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Luis Palau. In 1983, Palau told the evangelical magazine, “It’s great to have a Christian president as a model. The hand of God appears to be on him.”

But other observers have drawn different conclusions. A U.S. State Department report called Rios Montt’s reign “probably the most violent period of the 36-year internal conflict, resulting in about 200,000 deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians.” In 1999, Christianity Today reports, a U.N.-sponsored truth commission found government forces responsible for 93 percent of the war deaths.